


Bells will ring, the sun will shine

by Petra



Series: Modern Love [3]
Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Curtain Fic, F/M, M/M, Multi, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-22
Updated: 2012-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-29 23:21:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/325298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which no one technically goes to any chapel, as there aren't many that would perform this marriage ceremony.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bells will ring, the sun will shine

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://basaltgrrl.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**basaltgrrl**](http://basaltgrrl.dreamwidth.org/), who waited patiently. Thanks to [](http://sage.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**sage**](http://sage.dreamwidth.org/) for beta reading and [](http://talkingtothesky.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**talkingtothesky**](http://talkingtothesky.dreamwidth.org/) for Britpicking. As for the title, [](http://thatyourefuse.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**thatyourefuse**](http://thatyourefuse.dreamwidth.org/) said I could.

They have a good few months after the bustle of the wedding--after they've talked Gene into believing it's no less real if he stays, after they dodge all the questions about when Sam and Annie are getting a house of their own till they can arrange a place with their poor, lonely, divorced DCI as a grouchy, unwilling lodger. It's the mortgage on the house that sets him off, near as Annie can tell, because it's not till they've all the papers in hand that he gives Rachel Wallingford the eye across the pub and means it.

She's not seen Sam so cross in ages, and she knows just how much he's lying when he says, "Guv, I've worked out what that Scrubb bastard was thinking. Come on, we can't just sit round here."

Any other day she might be more sympathetic, more willing to join in Gene's obvious annoyance with yet more overtime, but that Rachel's got her hand on his knee and she'd not leave them alone for all the tea in China. Annie claps Gene on the shoulder as hearty as you please, reminding him--she hopes--that he doesn't need Miss Rachel for his fancies. "We'd best get back," Annie says, before Gene can protest. "Can't have Sam tearing up the whole office looking for his files, or we'll never find anything again."

Gene gives her a sullen look, worse than she's expecting, and for an awful moment she feels like his mum, catching him necking on the settee and ready to tell him off for being fresh. Then he shakes his head, once, and he's on his feet, Miss Rachel's hand falling away like it was never anywhere near him. "This had better be bloody good, Cartwright," he says, not even addressing Sam.

Ray sucks his teeth when they walk by him on the way out. "Hard luck, Guv," he says, and something worse, about keeping her warm for him. Annie does her best not to listen to Ray in his cups or she'd have to scream.

"What the hell was that?" Sam asks when they're at the car, far enough from the pub that there's light behind them but none around them.

Gene groans, a heavy sound that makes Annie think he's had far too much to drink to be properly useful, on the off chance that Sam's epiphany was something real. "What you wanted, Gladys. You said hop, I hopped. Despite my better judgement. Let's get that Scrubb of yours."

Sam runs his hands over his face, lost for words for a moment. "You can't--oh, for God's sake, get in the car."

"The trouble is," Annie says, when they've all piled in, but not started off, "you can't go round flirting like that."

They've talked it over before, of course, what it all means and where the limits are. She can't tell if she's angry quite yet, or just hurt.

"I thought this was about that murdering scum," Gene says, glancing at her in the rearview mirror. "Not you getting your knickers in a twist, Missus Tyler."

Annie puts her hand on his shoulder because she needs to touch him one way or another, to prove to herself he hasn't gone and ruined the whole thing, and if she doesn't touch him slowly and deliberately she'll be slapping him in a moment. There's the anger, for what good it'll do anyone. "About you making cow's eyes at Rachel bloody Wallingford?"

Gene sniffs.

Sam makes a frustrated noise and then his words come, a flood of them like Annie's been trying to get out of herself and not managing. "And how would you feel if I'd been in there, cozying up to some bird, buying her drinks like I didn't owe anything to anyone? Christ, Gene, it's like you've forgotten all the shit we've been through to make this work. Doesn't it matter to you at all?"

Gene gives him a look that Annie knows, in the street light, is not the truth--though when she learned to tell when he's truly angry and when he's putting it on for effect, she couldn't say anymore. "If I saw you with some fancy bird I'd wonder where your missus was, and I'd make book on how long it took her to break your bloody nose when she found you out."

"I'm tempted to do it right now," Annie says, though she's feeling less violent and more heartsick every minute.

Gene turns around at that. "For what, Cartwright? I've not gone trotting down the aisle with you."

Annie puts her hand over her mouth so as not to scream at him that he's being a fool, for he won't listen to that.

And then--hardly for the first time--she is sure she wouldn't have lasted five minutes in this tangle of love and frustration without Sam, because he punches Gene in the shoulder, light enough that it's as flirtatious as a hand on some woman's knee, and says, "If that's the trouble, we'll do that."

Gene frowns at him, but not fast enough or deeply enough to hide the hope in his eyes. "A right fool you'd look in white frills."

Sam looks like he's going to laugh for a moment, or like he's going to cry. "Nothing like that--none of the public nonsense. But I've known plenty of people who couldn't have an official do, and they managed. Sometimes it was just them and their closest friends, promising that they'd look out for each other--that they loved each other--in a front room. But the party's not the point. The point is that they made each other a bloody promise, and then they stuck by it."

If Annie had been wondering about whether Sam's upset, that edge in his voice would tell her right enough. He's furious, same as she is. He could be making it all up, but Annie doesn't mind that. Most of Sam's ideas are better than most anyone else's. "I've still got the veil somewhere," she offers.

"No amount of holding hands in the parlour's going to make it count in anyone else's eyes," Gene says, his chin up. Arguing just to argue, Annie would bet anything. Everything.

"Who does it have to count for?" she asks him. "What does it matter who knows, if we know? If--" she puts her hand on his arm and wishes she could kiss him, but no, not while they're still parked in the street and half CID could walk by any second. "If you know, and you act like you do, that's what counts."

Gene shakes his head, and Sam sighs. "It won't change the world, Cartwright."

"I don't need to change the bloody world." She checks round the car with a glance, and there's no one nearby, so she kisses his cheek. "I need you to remember where you ought to be, and not to go and wander off after someone else."

"I didn't wander anywhere," Gene says, more sullen than apologetic.

"Because I headed you off at the pass," Sam says, and Annie knows that note in his voice; he wants a kiss at least as fiercely as she does, and not a peck on the cheek neither.

Gene gives him a look--he knows, if he's listening, and he's nearly always listening. "Your Scrubb," he says.

Sam spreads his hands and shrugs, not looking innocent enough. "I needed you out of there before Annie started a punch-up with the woman you were after."

"I'd never," Annie says, which is true, and the reasons it's true are Gene's reasons, much though they make her chest ache. "She didn't know she oughtn't to."

"Because you can't make it bloody official. Wouldn't want to put it in the papers, announcing the engagement of." Gene starts the car. "Holding hands in the parlour."

"There are worse things to try," Sam says, and he sounds a good deal more relaxed. He knows--they all know--that anything that's bothering Gene this much has a chance of mattering, sooner or later.

Gene snorts. "You want to stand round and hold hands, we'll do it after we catch this bastard." He tugs Sam's hair fondly. "Get that brain of yours working. The rest will expect us to have some breakthrough by morning, or to see you out on a beat again for ruining my chances with a lady."

Annie relaxes a little on the one score. It's easiest when they're only arguing about work, and there's never any shortage of that.

*

No one brings it up again for days, though every time Annie looks at them she's thinking about it, whether they're snug at home or doing something that ought to be more important but isn't, just now. She doesn't admit how distracted she's been to Gene, for he'd either laugh at her or shout at her, depending on what'd been happening right before she said so. She doesn't need to start an unholy row.

Especially not when it's down to him to make the next step, as he's the one who made the biggest mistake last. That's not always how it works, but this time, she's holding out for it, and Sam is, too.

They've not talked about it in words, but they haven't needed to, not since Sam said, "Do you think--" over tea, right there in the office, his eyes on Gene like there was no one else in the world.

"Not till he says," she'd said then, and they were holding each other to it.

Holding onto each other tight, too, because it's a dangerous thing, pushing Gene till he bends or breaks. He never acts like a man who bends, always raising his voice and going on about how he'll never change his ways, even while he changes them.

Even while he lets them into his life. And into his heart, but the hardest bit of all's getting him to admit that.

Saturday dinner's a big spread, the sort of thing Sam comes up with when he's feeling inspired, with Annie to do most of the chopping and some of the stirring and then all the stirring in three pans at once while Sam realizes he needs one more thing or it won't be right.

Ray and Chris are both on at the station, so no one rightly needs them there. Never stops them going in, but a good meal can, on the best days.

Gene puts his fork down at last and looks at them. "Fine," he says, like they've been arguing. "Enough."

Annie glances at the serving plates, which have maybe a lunch worth of leftovers for one person. "I should hope so."

"No, not that." Gene gets up. "Come on, get your best kit on."

Sam's mouth twitches like he doesn't dare smile. If he smiles, Gene will see him and know he's looking forward to something. Annie knows how that feels. "Where are we going?"

"Abso-bloody-lutely nowhere." Gene tosses his napkin onto the chair.

Annie stands up. "So we're getting dressed--"

Gene sighs. "To stand in the front room and say silly things, have a drink, and take our clothes off again. If you don't mind too much, Cartwright."

Sometimes he says her name like it's a title, sometimes like it's the only thing he can bear to call her. But sometimes he says it like it's all the things he can't bring himself to say in any other words, and this is one of those times. She smiles at him. "I don't mind that at all."

And once he's committed to something, he's committed, to the tune of diving into the closet and saying, "Where'd you put your tie, Gladys?"

"Which one?" Sam says, while Annie's trying to decide whether her nice cream dress needs ironing. It's not been in the closet so long that she's terribly worried about it, and no one's taking the sort of photos that need developing.

But if anyone's going to remember wrinkles, it'll be them.

"This one." Gene emerges triumphant and hands Sam a dress shirt and the bow tie he wore for the actual wedding. They hadn't hired a proper morning suit for it, but the tie had been Gene's present.

Sam groans. "Not again."

There's a dangerous light in Gene's eye, as if he thinks having a tussle just before making important promises is all right, so long as it ends with everyone dressed up. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

That gets Sam, who puts out his hand for it, laughing. Annie shakes her head at them, giggling, and holds up the dress. "Should I iron it?"

Gene shrugs, and so does Sam. "We'll have it off you in a minute or two," Gene says, keeping his voice quiet like he's going to offend her, but isn't going to let that stop him saying what he wants to say.

"All right. Give us a hand with the zip, will you?"

She goes lightly on the makeup, no more than she'd wear to work. For the real thing, there were enough pictures that she was careful, did it up a bit more than normal so it'd show nicely.

She stops herself mid-thought, eyeliner in her hand. No, not the real thing. The public thing. If this isn't real, there's no point doing it.

"All right, there?" Sam asks her.

She smiles. It's easier than it was on the day they did the public ceremony, for she knows she wants this, them. She's got them both, more than she'd ever had Sam before the big do, and she wants to keep on having them as long as she can. "Yeah. Just a tick."

Her stomach's shaky, but not the way it was then. She'd worried then that Sam would realize there was no point in marrying her, that he'd be happy enough without her, but those worries hadn't made any sense.

The only thing that makes her hand tremble this time is wondering what they're all meant to say. No "dearly beloved," no rules, no minister to cue them gently when they forget what comes next.

Still, putting on the last touches is easy as tying her shoes, and she gets it done while Sam's trying to get Gene's tie to lie properly. "I hate these things," Gene says.

"You don't have to wear it on my account," Annie says, and he gives her his fiercest glare.

"If we're doing this, we're doing it right."

It feels like they ought to have music playing on the way down the stairs, but they don't. Or like they ought to have people waiting--all their parents who weren't anywhere near the public ceremony, all their friends who were there but who'd go half mad if they found out the truth. All they have is a room full of the things people have given them that they don't want anywhere else, the pictures from an auntie and the macramé Sam can't stand. That's as close to being surrounded by family as they're likely to get.

It's less dusty than it ought to be, for all Annie can't remember the last time she was in here with a rag. The curtains are drawn, always drawn, to keep the sun off the carpeting and the prying eyes away.

Once they're in the front room, it's too quiet. Annie bites down on the urge to giggle again and doesn't look at Sam, for when she does she can see his shoulders shaking. He's laughing, too, if he'd only admit it. "Something funny?" Gene asks.

"No," Annie says, feeling guilty.

"Nerves," Sam says, and he takes her hand.

Gene snorts and takes Annie's other hand. It grounds her so she's not quite so light-headed. "Finally realized what you've asked, have you?"

"No," Annie says, and squeezes his hand hard. "It feels rather silly, standing here like this with no one to see, that's all."

"Better than if we had an audience," Sam says, and she'll not argue with that.

"They'd come in expecting quite the show." Gene's not exactly smiling. "Three in a bed, sounds like the start to a blue movie."

"We're not in bed." Annie's still got his hand, and she's not letting go till they get somewhere--and not somewhere like bed, either. Not yet. "Three in a parlour's not so exciting."

"Three in a kitchen, now," Sam says, "that's a sight to see."

Gene clears his throat. "I'll leave you to it, then. I'm not about to promise to--" he falters for a moment "--love, honour, and bloody obey. Tried that. Didn't work out as well as anybody hoped."

Annie wants to hold onto him tight enough that he won't try to get away, but that's not how this works. That's not how anything works. People have to want things of their own accord, and no one can badger them into it. Even Gene. "Then don't promise that," she says, when she can say it round the lump in her throat.

She wants him to say it just the same, even knowing it might be a lie, but she won't ask him.

"You could promise part of it," Sam says. Time was when he didn't hope so much, but he's been getting better.

Gene kisses his knuckles. "I treat you with all the honour you deserve already, when it's safe to do it. Both of you." When it's not safe, he lies as loudly as anyone can, and it's down to Annie and Sam to trust that those times are the lies and the better times are the truth.

It's not hard, most of the time.

"That's not what I meant," Sam says, his chin up like he's ready to start a proper row over this.

"I don't make promises I can't be sure of." Gene is half-smiling, but it's the sort of smile that comes before a punch, like as not. "I promise that I won't lie to you, or pretend I'm any better than I am. And when it comes down to it, I'll put you before myself, every time, as long as you do me the same bloody courtesy, both of you." His voice is slightly hoarse. "You can't ask better than that."

Not a word of it is love, and all of it is anyway. Annie says, "I can swear to that," but Sam's mouth twists.

They hadn't used the oldest form of the marriage ceremony when they made it public, and there hadn't been any obeying. But there were words about exactly what Gene's dodging. "It's a start." Sam's frowning, and it's hardly a time for frowns. "But just once, straight out, how do you feel about all this?"

"I'd rather bicker with the pair of you than shag all the birds in the city--or any of the blokes, before you start in on me about that," Gene says. "Or I wouldn't be standing here holding your bleeding hand and telling you all this bollocks, would I? Christ, and you call yourself a detective."

Sam smiles. "I know what I think, but there's nothing like a real confession to nail someone to the wall."

It's a straight line, and Annie expects Gene to take him up on it, but he doesn't. He's quiet long enough that she wants to fill the silence. "So that's it, is it? No lying, no pretending, and thinking of both of you before myself?"

"It's not the words, it's following through on them."

"I know. I'll do my best, as long as you are." Annie kisses Gene softly, half-expecting him to make it more than that, but he doesn't.

"Sam?" he says instead.

It sounds wrong for a moment, as it's not what Gene calls him, given half a choice or four safe walls. But it's right for this.

"I don't lie to anyone except when I'm working," Sam says. "Least of all to you. And--" for a moment he looks on the verge of crying, if he were the sort of man who cried at weddings. "And I don't put myself first, either. I haven't in a long while, and I won't start now."

Sam's truths have gone from impossible to palatable, these last months. This last year, once Annie starts thinking about how long it's been since he said something too mad to prove. "Thank you," she says, and kisses his cheek.

She's not crying, but then it takes more than people saying good things that she already knows to set her off, most days.

Gene gets his arms round both of them and he's certainly not crying. He's coughing. "Too dusty in here," he says.

If Annie had a tissue to hand, she'd lend it to him. Whoever dusted the front room must've thrown up some dust, as she's got it in her eye, too. "If you had a proper suit on, you'd have a pocket square."

"But I don't. And I'm not carrying you both over the threshold, neither," he says.

Sam's not so shy about the shine in his eyes. "We could manage you between us. Don't you think, Annie?"

"For a few steps, at least."

"Don't you try it," Gene says, his voice rough again. "It'd put a damper on the second honeymoon, you dropping me on my head."

"You're much more likely to land on your arse," Annie says.

"Then we won't risk it at all," Sam says, keeping a solemn face for all of a second before he grins and kisses Gene, still holding onto Annie's hand as tight as can be.


End file.
